"Avoid war by every possible means in all possible circumstances, but always act as is it might start at any time. Gather intelligence on the enemy and his mentality, and monitor his movements continuously. Campaign vigorously, both offensively and defensively, but attack mostly with small units; emphasize patrolling, raiding, and skirmishing rather than all out attacks. Replace battles of attrition with the "nonbattle" of maneuver. Strive to end wars successfully by recruiting allies to change the overall balance of power. Subversion is the best path to victory.

Through the Boyd Cycle is how we gather and process information and make decisions in our day to day law enforcement duties. We utilize this process of observation-orientation-decision and action to see the world around us, orient to what we perceive is going on and then based on this observation and orientation we make decisions and take actions to accomplish certain objectives based on what our goals or intent is.

Sid Heal the author of Field Command offers some great insight into the Boyd Cycle and how it helps us in Law Enforcement seize the initiative. Sid has spent a life time over 40 years in the Marine Corps and over 30 in law enforcement and had applied these ideas in combat and in crisis. Its valuable information for those cops looking to improve their tactics.

Adaptive Leaders has another outstanding conversation. This one is with, Capt Bradley from the Marine Corps Expeditionary Warfare School talks about Col John Boyd ideas, as they apply to rapid decision making and getting inside your adversaries OODA loop, creating friction and slowing down their decision making abilities. Giving you the initiative!

Boyd is sometime criticized for not having sat down and written Patterns and his other briefings into nice books. They claim that his ideas are hard to fathom just from his briefings.

But Boyd’s framework, although deep and complex, is not esoteric. In addition to “Destruction and Creation,” Boyd produced a continuous stream of writings from August 1976 until January of the year before his death: Continue reading Chet Richards piece here: